The volumes consist of forty-three independent tribal bibliographies and a general bibliography. Each tribal bibliography is made up of citations to materials that are tribal specific, along with citations to general materials that contain significant amounts of information on that tribe. The general bibliography, which contains over 3,600 entries, is wide ranging, encompassing all materials in the tribal bibliographies as described above, materials not specific to any one tribal group, and supplemental materials concerning southern California native peoples. The first volume begins with an annotated bibliography describing materials appropriate for a basic library collection.
The bibliographies are built around citations to the field notes, manuscripts, and publications of early twentieth century anthropologists and linguists from the University of California, Berkeley who conducted extensive research on California's native peoples. After Alfred Louis Kroeber was appointed the first professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley in 1901, he focused his energy on the study of native Californian cultures. During his professional career, Kroeber witnessed the decline of Indian populations in California. With the help of other distinguished early anthropologists, including C. Hart Merriam, Edward Sapir, Pliny Earle Goddard, John P. Harrington, Roland B. Dixon, Edward W. Gifford, and Robert F. Heizer, Kroeber identified and documented native Californian cultures within the framework of cultural anthropology. His relentless research in this field was the catalyst for the extraordinary documentation produced by Kroeber and his colleagues on the indigenous peoples of the state. Consequently, the University is fortunate to have the world's largest collection of California Indian cultural materials.
As a result of the growing academic interest in anthropological studies, three University of California series, University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Anthropological Records, and Reports of the University of California Archaeological Survey, began publishing in 1903, 1937, and 1948, respectively. A majority of the contributions to these series focus on California ethnography and archaeology. In the early 1950s, the Department of Linguistics began to direct study upon indigenous languages. Academic research in this discipline, contributing to the understanding and reconstruction of Californian prehistory, has resulted in the compilation of linguistic studies, dictionaries, and valuable California Indian folklore. California ethnographic scholarship generated by the University of California has continued to flourish, the results of which have been published in numerous University and non-University monographs and journals.
Citations to works generated from the University of California form the core of the bibliographies presented here; they have been extensively supplemented with citatations to non-University research and publications. Nineteenth century writing on Native Californians often shows a strong Western bias about less technologically advanced peoples. Native Californians are frequently treated in these works as just another feature of the natural history of the state and an interesting aspect of California's past. However, they are not represented as an active part of California's present or future. In contrast, recent publications reveal a contemporary urgency concerning the legal status of tribes seeking federal recognition, tribal response to current economic pressures, and the ecological aspects, as well as the environmental impact of traditional land management. As a whole, the materials cited in the bibliographies allow researchers access to the immense variety of historical and contemporary subject matter relating to California's native peoples.The bibliographies had their genesis in the collection and organization of materials for twenty California county libraries and the California State Library as part of the California Indian Library Collections (CILC) project. The tribal citations have been drawn primarily from the holdings of the libraries and archives on the University of California, Berkeley campus. Specifically, eight archives on the campus have significant quantities of California Indian cultural materials: the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology (formerly the Robert H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology), the Archaeological Research Facility, the University Libraries (The Library, Anthropology Library, the Bancroft Library and University Archives), the Survey of California and Other Indian Languages, the Language Laboratory, and the University of California Extension Center for Media and Independent Learning.
The remaining bibliographic references were identified in the process of compiling electronic tribal collections on the Pomo and Miwok tribes for publication on CD-ROM. The Washo, Northern Paiute, and Shoshone tribal bibliographies were supplied in part by staff at Hung-A-Lel-Ti, the Woodfords Indian Education Center located at Markleeville, Alpine County, California.
These bibliographies should be regarded as a work-in-progress. As with the study of any human culture, the corpus of material relating to California's native peoples is large and varied. Thus, although the task of assembling a comprehensive list of these materials is essentially impossible, we have attempted to include all the major works on each tribe covered in these bibliographies. As new works or additional citations become available, they are added to the database from which these volumes were created, and will be included in future editions. Bibliographies pertaining to Native Americans who live or have lived along the central California coast and in southern California are planned for future publication.
Randal S. Brandt
CILC Librarian
Berkeley, California
January 1994